A Soft Voice, And No Stick

By MICHAEL COOPER

Published: March 4, 2003

It is no secret that Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg takes pains to cultivate a nonbelligerent, even friendly public persona. Now, that tack may be tested as he tries to wring $600 million in savings from the city's unions without bullying or threatening them.

Although some of his predecessors have, in the course of labor talks, professed themselves open to, or even eager for, mass layoffs, Mayor Bloomberg rarely misses the chance to praise city workers publicly, and to explain that he hopes to balance the budget without layoffs, or at least with as few as possible.

But the mayor is far from all carrot. In the report that accompanied his budget plan in November, he noted that the $600 million in union savings he is seeking was ''the equivalent cost of 12,000 city jobs.'' And, to get the attention of city workers, he said that any raises would have to be paid for through more productivity savings, over and above the $600 million target. Retroactive raises, he declared, are a thing of the past.

In his latest move, Mr. Bloomberg asked all city agencies last week to come up with $600 million in cuts, in case union talks fall apart without yielding savings.

It is basically a threat in slow motion, because while the mayor has shunned the L word, several aides have said that those contingency cuts would likely include layoffs.

Unions have increasingly become the focus of the city's efforts to balance its budget, especially after many of Mr. Bloomberg's most important budget requests were turned down by Gov. George E. Pataki, his fellow Republican.

With the city facing a budget gap of $3.4 billion to $3.9 billion in the fiscal year that starts July 1, administration officials say the city simply cannot afford not to get the $600 million in savings from the unions.

Mr. Bloomberg has no plans to change his style. ''Yelling and screaming doesn't accomplish anything,'' he said last week on his weekly radio show.

Still, some budget watchdogs are concerned that the mayor is not taking a hard enough line with the unions, who know a thing or two about not blinking.

''I can't imagine that he sold all those Bloomberg boxes by waiting for the customers to come on and offer him money,'' said Charles Brecher, director of research for the Citizens Budget Commission, a business-backed watchdog group, referring to the information terminals that made the mayor his fortune.

Former Mayor Edward I. Koch, a Bloomberg fan, offered this advice to the mayor: he should send out layoff notices and then negotiate savings with the unions.

''Then they're negotiating against a deadline,'' he said.

Some labor consultants have even said privately that a harder line from the mayor -- with more overt threats -- could help labor leaders save face with their rank-and-file members while trying to reach compromises with City Hall.

The mayor has proposed a number of ways for unions to come up with the money, from asking city workers to contribute to their health insurance, to lengthening the work week, to creating a cheaper pension system for future workers.

But several labor leaders now question the mayor's refusal to give raises to city workers unless they are financed by savings, noting that the mayor recently raised the salary of a top aide, Deputy Mayor Marc V. Shaw, to $194,999 from $168,700.

If anything, Mr. Bloomberg has seemingly softened his public stance on labor since he took office last year. While he spoke early in his term about the fact that the city's work force is one-seventh the size of the federal government's, these days he usually describes the work force as part of the solution, not the problem.

His first budget, for this year, called for $500 million in savings from the unions, but he got only about halfway there by delaying payments to the city's pension funds (which is, in effect, a way of borrowing from them) in a way that did not affect benefits.

Labor leaders said he never made any serious proposals about the other half.

In November, the mayor acknowledged that he would not get the remainder of the $500 million, and he called for $600 million next year. That target grew in importance after Mr. Pataki released his budget proposal, which rebuffed the mayor's call for a commuter tax and would cut education aid to the city.

The mayor threatened layoffs -- without using the word -- in January at his speech on the state of the city. ''Without productivity improvements, we will simply not be able to support the current labor force -- and will have no choice but to reduce our work force faster than attrition and early retirement programs will accomplish,'' he said.

Then, last month, he invited labor leaders to Gracie Mansion, where, over coffee and doughnuts, he outlined the city's fiscal troubles and told them that he hoped to avoid layoffs. Union leaders left the meeting praising his style, but making no offers.

But some of those same leaders were taken aback the following week when the mayor's budget director, Mark Page, wrote a letter to city commissioners which seemed to say that the unions were facing an April 1 deadline. Nobody had told them, they said.

Still, the mayor has tried to maintain the no-pressure tone of the salesman he once was.

''We will either get help from the unions, or if they choose not to, and that's totally up to them, we have to save the money some way or other,'' he said recently. ''It's not a threat, it's not trying to pressure anybody -- we have to, by law, balance the budget.''